The Shadow over Erris: Shell, IRMS and Bolivia

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This in my opinion is the single most comprehensive article to date on the tangled web of connections between Shell, IRMS and recent events in Bolivia. It draws heavily on the peer to peer research done here on a politics.ie thread by a motley crew of commenteers. The overall effort shames what passes for journalism on this septic little isle.

The Shadow over Erris: Shell, IRMS and Bolivia

[SIZE="4"]Excerpt from Introduction:[/SIZE]

Sometimes monsters do exist



In any country with a half way critical media the last few months would have been disastrous for Shell. In a crucial period in Shell’s imposition of an experimental gas pipeline on the people of Erris it emerges that Michael Dwyer, one of the security guards on this project, was part of an attempt to trigger a civil war in Bolivia. Soon after it comes clear that at least three others who had worked as security guards at the Shell compound had travelled to Bolivia with Dwyer and are wanted for questioning. Some it emerged had links to fascist organizations in Eastern Europe.

At least 156 private security work on what Shell calls the Corrib project accompanied according to the Irish Times by up to “Several hundred gardaí and the Naval Service .. with the Naval Service deploying one and “possibly” two patrol ships”. (1) The level of force being deployed to impose the Shell pipeline project on the local population is a testimony to the long running resistance of the people of Erris, a resistance that so far has not been broken by dozens of arrests, violence and the most vitriolic of attacks from paid hacks in the mainstream media.

At the time of writing everyone is preparing for the return of the pipe laying ship, the Soltaire. In advance of its return strange events have occurred in the dead of night. One Shell to Sea protester, Willie Corduff, required hospitalization after an encounter with masked men at the Shell compound at 4am. The fishing boat of another key Shell to Sea activist, Pat O’Donnell, was boarded at 2am by four masked and armed men who proceed to sink the boat, leaving the two men on board to fend for themselves. What is striking is the almost complete failure of the Irish media to investigate any of these stories in a serious way or to explore the elements that link events in Bolivia and Erris.

Lack of investigation

Yet in the same period we have seen both TV and print ‘investigations’ of the situation in Erris where the pipeline is being imposed. Bizarrely these have targeted the under resourced locals and their supporters as some sort of ‘dark force’ in the whole struggle and treated Shell as if its some sort of squeaky clean neutral force whose every utterance (including the ‘off the record’ ones) can be treated as statements of fact. And just as extraordinarily these ‘journalists’ have chosen to leave out the fact that known corrupt politicians changed the rules to allow Shell access to the gas royalty free.

At a time when health, education and community programs are being slashed due to ‘lack of funds’ surely this is a story? Given the history of corruption that has emerged from the tribunals, which involved the same politicians who gave Shell the Gas for free, what might be dug out with a little journalism?

The material found with a little bit of googling on the topic would make for a Hollywood film script, never mind a major expose in any of the major papers. Yet that article has yet to appear in any major mainstream media in Ireland. As we will see more has appeared in the international press. On the margins of the Irish media some things have been published, but basically as the work of one or two of the dozens of journalists who are supposedly reporting on the David v Goliath confrontation happening in Erris. Even in these cases too often the names of the companies and sites these men worked for and on have been left out.

Of course we will never know for sure what the facts are behind many of these events and the connection between them. Decisions to start civil wars or to sink boats are not going to be made and recorded in board rooms. Shell has a long, long history of imposing projects on local populations and dealing with the consequences of resistance. While we cannot say what happened we can bring the facts as they are known together and paint a picture that the reader can draw their own conclusions from. The picture is strange and complex, understanding it requires a little patience but the patience will be rewarded as distinct patterns emerge from what at first seems a bizarre patchwork of colours and shapes sprayed upon a wall by a careless creator.


Read the whole thing

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Here is the rest of this fantastic, hugely researched article from Andrew from the WSM (added in parts)

Dogs of war

In April 2009 Bolivian special forces raided a hotel room in Santa Cruz. During the course of the raid they shot dead an Irishman Michael Dwyer who had worked at the Shell compound in Erris, Eduardo Rozsa Flores, a Croatian-Bolivian fascist and one other man. Two others were arrested. In the following days the Bolivian authorities claimed that the gang around Flores were working to spark a civil war leading to the secession of the gas rich Santa Cruz region. Testimony was given that they had carried out one bombing and were planning a wave of assassinations. Not only had weapons been found in the hotel room but so too were pictures of the men posing with a high powered sniper's rifle capable of hitting a target at 1 km.

The killing of Michael Dwyer in Bolivia was treated by the Irish media as an oddity that had no particular connection to anything happening in Ireland. But how did Michael Dwyer who had worked as security at the Shell pipeline building project in Erris, Co Mayo end up being shot dead in Bolivia? Within days of the killing it emerged that many of the others wanted for questioning were European fascists, recruited by Flores.

There was another connection, although it was more normally hinted at then spelled out. Shell used to have a gas pipeline in Bolivia until less than a year before Dywer met his death. President Morales had announced the nationalization of this pipeline at the start of June 2008 after claiming that the holding company, which Shell had a 25% stake in, had “conspired against his government.” This was four months before Dwyer left the Shell compound in Glengad with a number of his fellow security guards for Bolivia.(2)


Dwyer pictured in Bolivia with Rozsa and some of their stash of weapons

The Phoenix was one media outlet that has dared to put some of the connections into print, and that fact that this magazine is read by just about every journalist means that the rest of the media can’t plead ignorance of the facts. In an article titled ‘Dwyer, IRMS and the Szekler Legion’ the Phoenix reports that Dwyer “fell in with a group of right wing Hungarians led by one Tibor Revesz, commander of the so called Szekler Legion, a paramilitary movement” some of whose members had worked as security at Shell’s Erris compound. (3) The Phoenix was being cautious, in a Cork Examiner article Scott Miller described the Szekler Legion as “an openly fascist paramilitary group which trains with AK-47s.” (4)

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Big-mouthed fascists

Dwyer it turned out had a fascist tattoo and was known to Irish fascists. On the Irish section of a fascist organising website (Name of fascist website removed in line with our 'No Platform' policy) a regular poster called ‘Byzantium Endures’ reposted an article about Dwyer's death on the day it was reported with the note ‘RIP mike’ returning a day later to post “He had SS sig runes tattooed on his arm, I know he was a WN.” (WN stands for ‘white nationalist’ i.e. fascist). ‘Byzantium Endures’ was to go on to make some pretty stunning claims, included in them were facts that were not yet in widespread circulation.


Dwyer showing his tattoo with the SS letters at the bottom

On the following day ‘Byzantium Endures’ posted again to claim that “Mike was in Bolivia working for a private security company, Integrated Risk Management Services (IRMS). It is owned by Terry Downes and James Farrell. Both Downes and Farrell are former members of the Irish Army Rangers.” And later that day “Just to add Mike's work out there involved doing close quarter protection work for Shell executives, seems Morales is sending a message to those who oppose him.”(5)

Fascists, particularly the online version, are notorious fantasists, so these claims need to be taken with a very large pinch of salt. 'Byzantium Endures' identifies Dwyer as connected with IRMS at around the same point as this was first being raised on indymedia.ie and also identifies the tattoo on his arm as being fascist in character. ‘Byzantium Endures’ obviously believed Dwyer was still working for IRMS however on April 22nd “I-RMS confirmed in a statement to The Irish Times that Mr Dwyer had worked for the company. It said he was employed as a security guard at the Corrib gas construction site from March to mid-October.” (6) Presumably this difference in accounts (‘Byzantium Endures’ version is similar to what it is reported Dwyer had told his parents) was because Dwyer could hardly tell the folks back home what he was actually up to.

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Disappearing websites

A second Phoenix article by ‘Goldhawk’ went on to point out that “Coincidentally no sooner had The Irish Times referred to Dwyer’s work for IRMS than the security company’s website was taken offline to be “updated’” and the references to “special services” and “international armed and unarmed security” were removed before access to the site was again prohibited. Goldhawk was anxious to get details of this “international armed and unarmed” activity from IRMS but the company failed to return his call." (7)


The sequence of changes to the IRSM site that occured after news of Dwyer's death in Bolivia. First the references to “special services” and “international armed and unarmed security” were removed and then the site was taken off line.

The IRMS website was not the only one that went down after the shootings. Another site to go down was photosniper.freedom.hu which was the personal site of Tibor Revesz, the ex-Hungarian army soldier identified in the first Phoenix article as the “commander of the so called Szekler Legion.” Revesz had left Bolivia ahead of the special forces raid that killed Dwyer and since then as Phoenix points out “websites appear to have been falling like ninepins, not least that of IRMS itself.”(8) The material on Ravesz site relating to Shell and Erris was also removed but not before some of it was spotted and copied by bloggers interested in the story.

They reported reported on indymedia.ie (9) and politics.ie that Revesz had on his web site souvenir badges, tee shirts and hoodies “commemorating two of the ‘glorious battles’ against the anti-Shell campaigners.” The implication of this is that he thought he had some sort of market to sell these to, presumably other Szekler legion members who had also worked in Erris. Just how many of these were there, apart from the ones we already know of?


Two of the badges that Revez had on his website prior to it being taken offline. Note the similarity with the SS Deaths head skull on right

They also revealed that the Revesz / photosniper site had been used in October 2008 to appeal for volunteers for an expedition to Bolivia (just 3 months after the nationalization of the Shell pipeline there). October 2008 was also when IRMS claims Dwyer left their employment. On his CV on the web site Revez said he started work for IRMS on 25.03.2008 but has no end date listed as he had for all his previous employers. (10)

Scott Miller writing in the Irish Examiner got a little more information out of IRMS on June 20 writing "Talking to the Irish Examiner in the Broadhaven Hotel, Mr Farrell confirmed that two Eastern European men who travelled to Bolivia with Mr Dwyer have in recent weeks resigned from his company. He dismisses speculation of any possible involvement by his company in the South American venture." (11)

This backs up an earlier Irish Times report from June 2nd that some of those who travelled to Bolivia with Dwyer were still working for IRMS on their return. In that piece Conor Lally could not find it within himself to even name the security firm the men had worked for never mind mention the name of Shell. He reported that “POLICE IN Bolivia want to interview three men living in Ireland about their movements in Bolivia with Michael Dwyer, .. The three men .. worked with Mr Dwyer in Ireland. The men – two Hungarians and a Slovak – travelled to Bolivia with Mr Dwyer last November. One of the men is still working in the same security company in Ireland where he and Mr Dwyer met. The other two men worked for the same firm until recently and are still living in Ireland.”(12)

Scott Miller had earlier reported in an Irish Examiner article that “Gábor Dudog and Gáspár Dániel, associated with the Szekler Legion are currently missing in Bolivia. According to reports in the Hungarian press, Mr Dudog worked in Ireland in the security business and spent 6 to 8 six to eight months in Bolivia, protecting deliveries for a major oil company.” In the light what we now know one wonders just which ‘major oil company’ Dudog was working for. And why the Irish Examiner, which has been braver in its coverage than most of the Irish papers, felt unable to name that company or to say just where in the security business in Ireland Dudog had worked.

It would be interesting to hear more from IRMS as to who these three men are and the specific dates of when they left IRMS employment.

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Naming names

The curious thing about almost all the media coverage is the obvious evasion in the way the sections of the articles that mention or might mention companies and names are written. Yet this Irish Times piece is still significant in saying that those who travelled with Dwyer were still working for the unnamed ‘security company’ and that at the point in the time (June 2nd) this article was written, one of them still was! It would be interesting to know where they were working but then if Conor didn’t want to name the company he’d hardly want to give us that information. Conor Lally is one of a number of journalists who has written about the Erris struggle in a manner calculated to portray the protesters in a negative light, it’s a pity he is so much more cautious when writing about the other side of that struggle.

The international press has not shared this caution. Here for instance is Saigon Daily’s version of events, which is in turn a reprint of the Wall Street Journal’s coverage. The first line introduces some new characters in the story, I’ll explain their relevance shortly.

“The Morales government says Mr. Marinkovic aided the Rósza gang with money and houses.
…
In Ireland, Mr. Révész worked as a guard at a pipeline project, according to one friend and one co-worker. It was the same place where Michael Dwyer, the young Irishman, worked. Integrated Risk Management Services Ltd., contractor for security at the pipeline, said Mr. Dwyer was a security guard for six months last year. The company didn’t respond to an email asking about Mr. Révész’s employment.” (13)

Marinkovic was a major shareholder with Shell of the nationalized pipeline in Boliva. The Bolivarian government accuses him of being linked in with Rosza, the apparent commander of the gang. Marinkovic denies this connection. Dwyer was of course killed with Rosza in the Santa Cruz hotel. From the investigations in Bolivia it appears the return flights of 11 people including Dwyer were paid for from Madrid to Bolivia. La Prensa of June 4 named the eight who actually travelled as “The Irishman Michael Dwyer, the Hungarians Tibor Revesz, Elod Toaso, Daniel Gaspar and Gabor Dudog, the Slovak Ivan Pistovcak, the Romanian Arpad Magyarosi and the Bolivian-Croatian Mario Tadic.” (14) Of these 8 men Dwyer and Arpad (a Szekler Legion members) were killed in the hotel room raid in Bolivia. Toaso (also named by the Examiner as a Szekler legion member) was arrested in the same raid. Some of the others named, including Revesz have been named in Bolivia as wanted for questioning in connection with the events there.

[wombat]

I doubt the Bolivian navy were involved in sinking the fishing boat.

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The Sunday Mail speaks out


The Mail on Sunday exposé of the story, the most complete account so far published in Ireland

In terms of papers published in Ireland the one that perhaps has gone the furthest at this point in time is The Mail. This is a little surprising as politically it is further to the right than any of the domestic titles that have stayed quiet, but then again, its owner isn’t linked into the oil and gas exploration off the west coast. On May 31st the Mail reported

“It is now known that Kildare-based security firm Integrated Risk Management Services (I-RMS) played a part in bringing Dwyer together with right-wing Hungarian elements from a group known as the Szekler Legion - an outfit prepared to use violence to achieve autonomy for ethnic Hungarians in a border region of Romania.

One of those elements was Tibor Revesz, a commander of the Szekler Legion and the owner of its websites - upon which appeals for volunteers for an insurgency campaign in Santa Cruz were advertised late last year.

Both Revesz - who is being sought by Bolivian law enforcement and thought to be still in Ireland - and Dwyer worked for I-MRS protecting the Shell Corrib gas project. It is here, facing down protests from the Shell to Sea campaign, that the pair are thought to have met.

.. Revesz also used his website to advertise an I-RMS close-protection course that included pistol, carbine and tactical firearms training. All of Revesz’s web pages have been deleted in recent weeks.

I-RMS - based beside the Army Ranger Wing HQ in the Curragh in Co. Kildare - has refused to comment about its role in bringing Dwyer and right-wing fanatics together.

But there is no doubt that any of the foreign-owned oil companies present in Bolivia would certainly have an easier life if something were to happen to Morales.” (15)

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The Rangers and Fort Benning

The Mail article introduces a new element, the role of the Irish Rangers in the story. Who are the Army Rangers? The are an elite and secretive ‘special forces’ unit of the Irish army intended to fill a similar function to the SAS or elite US military formations. A good first source is the Irish Army website (16) which despite blurring the faces of Rangers in photos otherwise tells us quite a bit. For instance under their history of the unit they tell us “In the late 1960s and early 1970s a small number of Defence Forces personnel attended American Army Ranger Courses at Fort Benning, Georgia in the United States. On their return, these personnel were responsible for organising similar type courses.”

Fort Benning, Georgia is the home of the ‘School of the Americas’ often referred to as the ‘School of the Assassins’ because “many of its students have been associated with death squads, and coups in Latin American countries” (17) including Roberto D'Aubuisson who murdered the Salvadorean Archbishop Óscar Romero while he celebrated mass. In November 1989 Schools of America’s graduates murdered six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. The SoA trains the special forces units of many of the armies in Central and South America, the equivalent of the Irish Rangers.

School of the Americas Watch says the school “taught repressive techniques and promoted the violation of human rights throughout Latin America and around the globe. The manuals contain instructions in motivation by fear, bounties for enemy dead, false imprisonment, torture, execution, and kidnapping a target's family members.” Every year more than 10,000 people demonstrate at the School of the America’s on the anniversary of the killing of the 6 priests , their housekeeper and her daughter. As a result of the repression of these protests “183 people have collectively served over 81 years in prison.”

The Irish Army website actually situates the formation of the Rangers in the context of the sort of training the SoA provides (with of course a positive spin) when it writes “The evolution of the Army Ranger Wing resulted from an increase in international terrorism in the late 1970s and 1980s .. European and other countries realised that conventional police and military tactics were not suited to dealing with this escalating threat.” Elsewhere their site refers to “Seaborne Interventions” and “Difficult or dangerous specialist tasks on land or at sea” under the heading ‘Aid to the Civil Power’. It would be interesting to know what if any Ranger deployments may have happened on the land and sea around Erris under the excuse of ‘Aid to the Civil Power’.

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The strange events in Erris & motivation by fear

Now that we know a bit about Ranger training and their possible scope of operations it’s worth looking again at some of the stranger events that have been reported from Erris. What at first seems fantastical seems less so when you take into account who may be deployed down there and just how far the Rozsa group were willing to go in Bolivia. Really in that context the happenings at Erris are not at all extreme, quite the opposite in fact. The odd beating or sinking hardly measures up to the bombing of cardinals or assassination of state governors.

Following the mysterious attack by masked men on local activist Willie Corduff at the Shell compound the Mayo News carried the following “IN an emotional interview, Mr Corduff recalled how, after spending almost 19 hours lodged under a Shell lorry, he was allegedly assaulted by men in balaclavas .. “I think they were professionals. They seemed to be big men. They put me down on the ground and all I can remember is four of them kneeling on me. They didn’t use their hands, they used their knees. They squeezed me like a sandwich and they had my airwaves closed off; and my hands were at the back of my head.” (18)

Then on the night of 11th June local fisherman and activist Pat O'Donnell's boat the 'Iona Isle' was boarded by four masked and armed men and sunk out at sea. A Shell to Sea press release reported the event as follows “At 2am on Thursday morning, Pat O'Donnell's boat the 'Iona Isle' was boarded by four masked men and sunk out at sea, near where Mr. O'Donnell lays his fishing pots off Erris, North Mayo. Mr. O'Donnell and crewman Martin McDonnell were attacked and held down by some of the men, while others went below deck, where they proceeded to sink the boat. Both local men have been taken to Castlebar General Hospital, where they are recovering.”(19)

Pat later put out an account on indymedia which included “Pat O'Donnell's fishing boat was boarded by four masked men, two of whom were armed, at approximately two o clock this morning whilst out at sea laying pots. The two armed men held Mr O'Donnell and his crewman Martin McDonnell in the wheelhouse of the boat while another two went below deck for 20 minutes. These men returned to the deck and the two crew members were held for one and a half hours until the engine went out. At this point the masked men alighted onto an unknown vessel that took them away. None of the men spoke good English. Mr O'Donnell went down to the engine room and realised that the boat was sinking.” (20)

One aspect of the special forces training described by SoA Watch falls under the heading ‘motivation by fear’. This would seem a reasonable term to describe some of the events in the Erris area, many locals are on record as being afraid of the various mysterious forces active in and around the area. They haven’t managed to get clear answers about who has been seen filming them (and their children). The limited media coverage of their fears has tended to ridicule them as being unreasonable, when you look at the big picture it becomes clear their fears are very reasonable indeed.

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What was going on in Bolivia?

Dwyer's mission appears to have been to help spark a civil war that would lead to the secession of the Santa Cruz region from the rest of Bolivia. Much of the mineral wealth, including the gas of Bolivia is in the Santa Cruz region. Bolivia is currently ruled by Evo Morales, a radical president who was swept to power on the back of a massive social movement and who then part nationalized the gas industry including Shell’s pipeline. It is possible the secession of Santa Cruz would see the rise of politicians more compliant with the interests of international energy corporations like Shell. More in other words like the sort of politicians that gave Shell the gas royalties for free in Ireland.

Branco Marinkowitz is the politician and large business owner who has been identified in the Bolivian and international press as the main leader of the secessionist movement. Marinkowitz is a founder (and president) of the secessionist Council of Santa Cruz. Shell’s connection with Marinkowitz is through that pipeline company that Shell also owned 25% of until it was nationalized. four months before Dwyer and the others left the Shell compound in Glengad, Erris.

The Irish mainstream media have almost universally tired to paint Dwyer as an innocent abroad, at worst a Walter Mitty type character caught up in a situation he didn’t understand. Minister Micheal Martin initially played the same game before going quiet once more details started to emerge from Bolivia. We’ll look at Dwyer’s involvement in detail in a while but let there be no doubt that those he was working with were dangerous people.